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Amid all of Donald Trump’s haphazard policymaking and chaos-mongering, one part of his agenda has remained remarkably consistent throughout both terms: the quest for something he calls “energy dominance.” While Trump probably thinks he coined the concept, only the name is new; it’s really merely a macho rebranding of what was traditionally known as “energy independence,” the desire to produce the nation’s energy domestically rather than import it from potential adversaries. The yearning for energy independence became a focus back during the Nixon era, when geopolitical tensions sparked overlapping energy crises. Ever since, it’s been pursued by every administration, both Democratic and Republican.

So, yes, even cardigan-wearing, thermostat-adjusting Jimmy Carter was an energy dominance guy, maybe even the most successful one. Same goes for Presidents Obama and Biden. What distinguishes Trump — despite all of his regulatory rollbacks, his “Drill, Baby, Drill” and “Mine, Baby, Mine” and “Beautiful Clean Coal” rhetoric and various “emergency” orders — is that his push for dominance has not only been ineffective, it has actually served to weaken the domestic energy industry and has even diminished its ability to produce the power needed to keep modern society running.

If Trump really cared about energy dominance, independence or abundance, he would use all of the tools at his disposal to “win” this war. Even an energy warrior who didn’t give a hoot about pollution or the climate would insist on keeping the fastest-growing energy sources — wind and solar with battery backup — in the nation’s arsenal, along with nuclear, geothermal, hydropower and natural gas, simply for practical reasons, relying on what previous administrations have called an “all-of-the-above” approach.

Instead, Trump has essentially discarded the most promising and effective energy technologies by eliminating federal tax credits for wind power and both rooftop and utility-scale solar, shuttering new wind projects on federal land and in federal waters, subjecting proposed utility-scale solar on federal land to additional scrutiny and red tape, and canceling the Solar for All program that aimed to bring clean energy and energy self-reliance to lower-income families. More recently, the administration clawed back over $7 billion in Biden-era funding for clean energy and grid-reliability projects, many of which were in Western states and all of which came from states that favored Kamala Harris over Trump in the 2024 election.

Meanwhile, Trump’s administration is trying to prop up the decrepit and rusty weapons of old, i.e. fossil fuels, and putting them on the front lines in the apparent hope that they don’t crumble away before his term ends.

The administration plans to fork out about $625 million in subsidies in hopes of revitalizing the flagging coal industry and has rolled back myriad regulations (also a form of subsidy) on coal-fired power plants. It has also opened 13 million acres of public land across the West to new coal leasing and overturned Biden-era bans on new leasing in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana. At the same time, it has inexplicably canceled funding for carbon capture projects aimed at prolonging nearby coal plants’ lives.

Trump is clearly not looking to achieve energy dominance, but rather to exercise his countless grievances and realize some historical fantasy — while, of course, helping fossil fuel executives rake in a few more bucks while they still can. It’s a sort of qualified bid for coal and oil dominance, so long as it benefits red-leaning states.

But so far, even that’s not going too well.

Earlier this month, the Bureau of Land Management held its first coal lease sale in over a decade on public land in the Powder River Basin. There was only one would-be buyer, the Navajo Transitional Energy Company, which bid just $186,000 for a tract containing about 167 million tons of coal — meaning about one-tenth of one cent per ton. That’s in contrast to sales in 2012 that brought in over $1 per ton. The feds rejected the bid on the grounds that it didn’t comply with the Mineral Leasing Act since it didn’t fetch fair market value. The Interior Department promptly canceled another sale in the Powder River Basin for 441 million tons of coal just days before it was scheduled to take place. And a third sale, this one on public lands in southwestern Utah, attracted only one low bid as well; and it, too, was rejected.

And just days after the administration announced its plans to pour taxpayers’ cash into the coal industry, PacifiCorp, the largest grid operator in the Western U.S., doubled down on its plans to convert its Naughton coal plant in Wyoming to run on natural gas. Idaho Power actually proposed a rate decrease for its customers after it cut costs by shutting down a unit at a Nevada coal plant. Meanwhile, no utility anywhere has seriously proposed building any new coal plants, mainly because it is simply an obsolete, expensive and dirty technology.

The president’s continual desire to “Drill, Baby, Drill” is experiencing a failure to launch, as well. The BLM has handed out drilling permits like Shriners throwing candy to the crowd at a parade, continuing to do so at an alarming rate despite the government shutdown. During the first six months of Trump’s term, the administration issued 2,660 permits to drill on public lands — about 524 per month. That eclipses Biden’s biggest year of 2023, when he issued 317 per month and garnered the disdain of climate activists.

And yet, drill rig counts, the most accurate indicator of the industry’s enthusiasm and a good barometer of future crude oil and natural gas production levels, have remained stagnant during Trump’s term. In fact, they’re significantly lower than they were a year ago, shortly before Trump was elected. That’s due in part to low oil prices, which is something Trump has pushed for (and maybe prodded Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members to encourage by increasing their own oilfield pumping), but also because Trump’s disorderly trade wars are sowing confusion, while his tariffs on steel and aluminum are raising costs for drillers.

“Society will not treat us kindly unless we do our part to clean up after we are gone.”

The most recent Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas survey of oil and gas executives revealed how poorly Trump’s policies are playing out in the oilfields. Most of the executives surveyed said that Trump’s regulatory rollbacks and federal royalty reductions would bring down their “break-even” costs only slightly, and that they would not appreciably increase production.

Generally speaking, optimism is in short supply in the oilpatch these days.

“It’s going to be a bleak three-plus years for the oilpatch,” one executive said, in a survey that was designed to be anonymous to encourage a candid response. Another noted: “After Liberation Day, we cut our drilling budget in half from 10 wells to five wells.”

And yet another declared, “We have begun the twilight of shale. Several multibillion-dollar firms that have previously been U.S.-onshore-only are making investments in foreign countries and riskier (waterborne) geologies.” They went on to question what will happen to the hundreds of thousands of abandoned and orphaned wells when the drilling boom ends, noting, “Society will not treat us kindly unless we do our part to clean up after we are gone.”

Last week, the Trump administration moved to reopen 1.56 million acres on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain to oil and gas leasing, just as he did in 2017 at the outset of his first term. The first lease sale in the refuge was held in 2021, just days before Biden was inaugurated, but it attracted only low bids — none from major oil companies — with most of the leases going to an Alaska state agency. Another auction in January 2025 drew no bids at all. The industry simply isn’t all that interested.

Just as Biden’s heightened regulations on oil and gas drilling didn’t slow drilling or production, Trump’s determined deregulation is unlikely to speed it up. Nor will his hostility toward solar and wind kill their momentum: Firms are bringing utility-scale projects online at a rapid rate and financing new proposals despite the lack of federal incentives. Federal policies can serve to mitigate energy development’s impacts or perhaps bolster the companies’ profits somewhat, but they are only one of many factors that influence how much and at what rate development occurs. All the political rhetoric in the world won’t help; so-called energy dominance simply cannot be willed — or forced — into existence.